Bringing K2 Cloud Features On-Prem - Introducing an Updated K2 Five

As the process automation landscape continues to change and evolve and we see a larger set of users actively engaged in the creation of business applications, K2 is laser-focused on providing new and innovative ways for our customers to build and manage applications using the K2 platform. Over the past few months, we’ve released several features to our cloud customers that enable all users, both professional developers as well as less technical business developers, to quickly roll out solutions to unique business problems. Up until now, these capabilities have been available only to our cloud customers, but we’re excited to announce that this week’s release of K2 Five 5.1 will bring this core set of features to our on-premises customers as well.

Here are just a few of the feature highlights our on-premises customers will now enjoy.

Focus on Rapid Application Development

One of our key initiatives at K2 is to enable our customers to roll out applications to solve their unique business problems as quickly as possible. To do that, we’re focusing on providing new and enhanced features focused on rapid application for both professional developers as well as less technical business developers.

One way we’re accomplishing this is with the introduction of the K2 App Wizard, which provides a wizard-based interface for creating an application in four simple steps. Focused on simple use cases including surveys, approvals and document management, the K2 App Wizard handles all the technical detail and creation of the application for you, so you can start using the application within minutes, not days.

In addition, we’re providing a whole new set of K2 SmartStarters that have been optimized specifically for our new design environment. SmartStarters provide pre-built templates for common use cases like employee onboarding and IT service requests, and can be published and used immediately. SmartStarters are also easily customizable if you need to make modifications to meet your organization’s specific needs but don’t want to build an application from the ground up.

Intelligent Workflow

With the introduction of K2 Cloud and K2 Five, we introduced an entirely new Workflow Designer focused on ease of use. Since then, we’ve added several enhancements which are focused around providing more intelligent workflow capabilities for users who are less familiar with the technical details of implementing an error-free application.

One such feature is SmartAssist, which provides guidance and best practice tips to users as they’re building a workflow. Our latest enhancement to this feature is the inclusion of warnings for things like infinite loops or other design flaws that may cause performance issues once deployed. These warnings are visual cues that allow the user to make changes to the workflow at design-time instead of after it has been deployed or is in use. For more detail on SmartAssist, see our recent blog dedicated to this feature.

Management and Governance

Management and governance of applications that have already been deployed are equally important and we’ve provided some additional enhancements here as well.

Updates to the K2 Authorization Framework, which provides security for K2 applications, makes it easier than ever to govern who uses and modifies K2 applications and components like Forms and SmartObjects. With the granular level of security provided by Authorization Framework, you can set up security to fit your specific needs. Want to ensure that only IT staff have the ability to create objects that integrate with your line-of-business systems? No problem, Authorization Framework has you covered. Do you have an application that handles sensitive personnel information that only the HR team should see? Authorization Framework can be used to lock that down to a specific group or set of people with just a few clicks.

We’ve also made enhancements to capabilities specific to the management of the K2 platform and applications once they’ve been deployed. Artifact and application cleanup make it easy for admins to dispose of old or unused applications properly. Enhancements around package and deploy for moving applications between K2 environments make it easier to handle the lifecycle of your K2 applications.

For more detail on the features mentioned above, as well as other capabilities added to K2 Five 5.1, including enhanced integration with Exchange and Salesforce as well as Excel export capabilities for K2 SmartForms, take a look at the What’s New information. Or, if you are not a current K2 customer but would like to learn how K2 can enable users across your organization to easily build and manage business applications, contact us today!

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